There is a widely held view that boys get dealt a poor hand in education. In acknowledging this, we need to avoid implying that girls hold better cards, that the game is rigged, and that this allows them to make disproportionate claims on the best grades in public exams, and places in higher education.

UCAS’s Mary Curnock Cook points to the growing gender imbalance in recruitment to higher education, and has urged the need to address the “chronic underachievement of boys” at school. The sociologist Frank Furedi sees this stemming from a regime of low expectations of boys, reflecting a self-perpetuating stereotype whereby boys are characterised as more easily distracted and less intellectually curious than girls. As Furedi sees it, teachers too readily write off boys because they are boys.

The assumption is that gender differences are socially constructed, and that in a world without stereotypes - freed from what Furedi calls “gender fixations” - there would be no imbalance between boys and girls in either dispositions (for instance, interest in reading) or outcomes (exam grades or university enrollment). But it’s not simply a matter of removing socially constructed barriers to boys’ learning. Girls are subject to stereotyping, prejudice and gendered expectations. It simply isn’t the case that girls have it all their own way at school.

According to Furedi, girls are assumed by many teachers to be more focused and more academic. By extension, girls might be seen as typically more compliant and cooperative. But this in itself creates problems, not least for girls who do not happen to fit that prejudicial pattern; and who, in their subversion of the stereotype, might be seen to have failed twice over.

‘Substantial challenges’

There are substantial challenges involved in teaching girls. Studies show that girls often adapt their classroom behaviour to the expectations of peers and of teachers, typically acting as mediators, less likely to dispute or impose, more willing to let others take the lead.

Curriculum choices are strongly influenced by gendered perceptions of the self as well as the subject. This much is evident in the greater take-up of Stem subjects in girls’ schools.

Girls remain the subject of sexist bullying and harassment in schools, as Mary Bousted points out. Social media has made it worse, multiplying and magnifying the ways in which behaviour and appearance are “policed” through peer pressure.

The result of all this may well be to induce behaviours that yield short-term prizes (popularity, good grades and a place at a selective university), but at some cost - whether measured in physical or mental health, self-esteem or career ceilings.

Schooling may not be ‘boy-friendly’. But girls do not necessarily have it all their own way. Girls are as vulnerable as boys to stereotyping.

The answer is not, ”pace”, Tim Oates, to try to teach boys as if they were girls. It is, surely, to treat all pupils as individuals, bearing in mind that this involves tackling gender stereotypes, and using schools as safe spaces in which to subvert them. 

Dr Kevin Stannard is director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust

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